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Topic: Dev Silent in Forum and Blog (Read 29129 times)

Nothing posted in the forum from the Dev/Author of World-Machine in close to a year and not a single blog entry in OVER a year, feels unfair to be able to purchase or upgrade the software when there is no way to know if it is still in development or being maintained. The reason I'm curious is that Quadspinner is releasing an update to Geoglyph and my last version of that wasn't fully compatible with the dev version of World-Machine.

This is what they wrote to me on Facebook -- "QuadSpinner: Stephen has indeed been very quiet, but as we understand the software is still under development. We're looking forward to the next 3.0 build. In the meantime, we'll pass on the message that users are eager to get an update from him."

... do not care about WM for about 1/2 year = "very quiet" Dax must be a role-model of an optimistic person ^^

really sad - after switching to the new license model, there was like.. what.. zero updates? so ppl paid money for vaporware, because the license grants updates for 1 year - but there were non. 2.3.7 (2014-10-23) is still latest stable release, if I am not mistaken.

sorry Stephen, but this looks and feels like a total ripp-off to me.

banging on the drum, new features were announced, new licensing, promises of more frequent updates and so on... but things remain silent - I mean .. really???

meanwhile, advertise-bots for asian industrial machines are taking over this forum

Well Quadspinner is telling us that the dev is still active, but it's in their interest to do so, if they would tell us that Stephen stopped working on WM people would move onto the next software and leave Quadspinners products in the dust too

Ive just had an email from Cornucopia3D stating that the new version of Vue is going to have a brand new heightfield generator (at long last!)- creating landforms with shape, splines etc and proper erosion...

You don't think...

Is this where Stephen has been for the last six months.....?

Just a wild guess and/or conspiracy theory...

From the site:-

"With VUE 2016, we're introducing a brand new terrain modeling technology, more flexible and a lot more powerful, called "Heightfield Terrains".

This new technology allows you to add terrain effects that were previously impossible to achieve, such as Hydrological & Thermal Simulations!

Similar to procedural terrains, Heightfield Terrains are based on a function graph, but baked on a fixed-resolution grid. This will give you more flexibility and add more realism to your terrains. Heightfield Terrains are also significantly faster to render!

Heighfield terrains are manually sculptable and parameters can be animated - e.g. to simulate a terrain erosion over time for instance!

And finally, you can easily set up your graph outputs to drive your material presence, directly from within the Terrain Editor interface.The Heightfield Terrains technology comes with its set of new dedicated nodes and presets, like Erosion, Slope, Convexity, Blur or Terrace.

New Layout Nodes also let you design a terrain's "layout" (most prominent features) using hand-drawn elements like Splines, elements from the scene, or simple shapes (circles, rectangles, rounded rectangles)."

Well Quadspinner is telling us that the dev is still active, but it's in their interest to do so, if they would tell us that Stephen stopped working on WM people would move onto the next software and leave Quadspinners products in the dust too

You're right Oshyan, it seems to me that the same features have been renamed to follow convention, and erosion has been slightly improved. Vue did not have completely unified interface before, so using splines for shaping the terrain was not very straightforward. Maybe they improved that workflow and renamed it layouts? It's a really disappointing news to be honest.

Onkelpoe, I already tried calling him some months ago (left a message), and sent multiple emails and even a Facebook message. I'm not close enough to just drop-in at is house, otherwise I might consider it... I'm pretty sure he's still alive. But for some reason not responsive. It's quite strange and sad...

Now I officially dislike this situation. Never seen such a case in my life but this... For a long time I just said to myself, hey, they might just have some personal difficulties or something, it'll be fine. But no... it looks like a complete rip off. So much was promised, many features, and nothing delivered. Sorry, but should have at least left a way for people to get a refund.

If you tell people something has happened and you can't continue the development that's one thing, I know the difficulties that can happen to one person mid development. But if you just disappear on your customers because you felt like doing so oh well I don't have a word for that in my book.

The only reason I'm trying to keep calm is because of GeoGlyph 1-2, which is still like a "pay to get updates" service and isn't nice (we should've had all those stuff in the form of official WM2 updates by now) but anyway it helps with the pain of an outdated tool a little.

Heck one day WM2 stops working on the newer versions of windows and there's not going to be an update for that as well. It's horrible.